If you claim to be a fan of horror movies in general, or a fan of vampire movies, and you do not know who Peter Cushing is, I may have to call you a Poser.

This British actor, born in 1913, should rank up there with Bela Lugosi in name recognition. Horror and Vampires owe as much to him and Christopher Lee as they to do Bela.

Having an aunt who was an actress inspired his own acting dreams and he did amateur theater while also going to drama school.

He continued to perform and decided to give Hollywood a try in 1939 when he landed a part in Man in the Iron Mask (good film, haven’t seen it in years) that same year. But Hollywood wasn’t his style and he did a bit of acting in Canada and on Broadway and returned to England to entertain the troops during WWII.

He had the opportunity to perform Hamlet with Laurence Olivier and Christopher Lee was there in a bit part. He and Lee also had the opportunity to do Moulin Rouge together as well.

He is a perfect example of the British entertainment industry, where actors perform in film, on stage, and for television and he became a very familiar face on British television sets. In fact, he was so well-known on t.v. that a comedian once called a television set “Peter Cushing with Knobs”. (IMDB)

Near the end of the 1950’s, Hammer Film’s started to remake all the old horror films from the 30’s. People saying we are in the decade of the Remake/Reboot are failing to notice that every decade does this. They usually draw on material from 20 to 30 years prior. What is unusual now is that they are currently drawing on material that isn’t actually all that old.

The Cushing and Lee names eventually became synonymous with Van Helsing and Dracula, at least to American viewers and apparently became best friends for life. Cushing thought it odd that people would look at him and see a monster, he never actually played a monster. He was occasionally the creator or a monster, Such as Baron Frankenstein, but often the man who killed the monsters, such as Van Helsing and Sherlock Holmes, who proved monsters were just humans with a bit of unusual knowledge. It was Lee who often played the monster.

For 20 years, Cushing performed in primarily horror programs. During this time, although he did two films as The Doctor, he was actually the first choice for the original doctor. I have not yet found out why that didn’t happen. Of course, his most notable exception was Star Wars, as Grand Moff Tarkin. It is interesting to note that as many people working on Star Wars expected it to fail, Cushing actually thought kids would really like it.

After his wife died, he seemed to have lost a lot of his will and didn’t perform as much. His Star Wars performance was one of the few things he really did after her death. He did do a few other bits and peices, but nothing as well know.

One of my favorite quotes by him is “You have to have a sense humor to be alive. Or a bit mad. It helps to be mad.” Of course, I’ve discovered that this isn’t the accurate quote. It should be “You have to have a sense of humor, darling, to be alive. Even a bit mad. It helps to be mad”. (1991)

I found information on a variety of sites, I think I want to pick up either one of his autobiographies. Most of the information seemed identical to IMDB or Wiki. I’m not sure if wiki was based on the others or the other’s were just regurgitating Wiki. So I primarily used IMDB for the timeline to organize the information I knew and filled in a few bits from Wiki. Since most of what I know came from various t.v interviews and overviews over a lot of years, I couldn’t even begin to remember which programs my knowledge originally came from. It probably came from PBS, A & E, and random stations running themed marathons where they talk about the people in the movies between showing the movies.

My roommate and I ended up having a discussion on how many time the Doctor could regenerate, so I felt the need to do a little research. I thought, that when I was young and watching it on PBS, one of the early doctors had said they could only regenerate 7 times. For that to work, a normal, single body, life span would have to be much longer than a human’s. This was a rather old episode and they were still filming new episodes of the old series back then. It may have been one that was taped over and lost forever.

Somewhere, the old writers must have realized they could possibly run through 7 actors and extended the number 12. That means with his first life, before his first generation, he would have a total of 13 bodies. We are on 11. So we can have 2 more faces. Anything you can search out online indicates the 12 and/or 13 number. If there are 13 regenerations, then there are 14 ‘lives’. Perhaps the 7 number is one that my memory made up from a dream.

There have been hints that Time Lords could circumvent this limit by various means as the Master had done so. On a couple of occasions, non-Time Lords have regenerated with less than idea results and through a variety of methods.

During an episode of Sarah Jane Adventures, or maybe an interview regarding the show, the Doctor indicates that he can now regenerate 507 times, which may have been just a way to say that either do to the end of the rest of the race, or as a consequence of the Time Wars, he may now have an unlimited number of regenerations.

Now if you simply try to count faces, there are FAR more faces than current regenerations can account for. Two separate actors have filled in for the first doctor. Once due to an injury and another time due to the fact that the first actor was already deceased and they needed someone to do the part. But the intent in those cases was for the other actor to actually be the first doctor and not a different regeneration.

Other actors have performed the part on stage and the intent was for them to actually portray an existing regeneration. So we can discount those as well.

Radio programs were sometime recorded with the correct actors and often with other voice actors playing the part of a known regeneration.

Other actors occasionally play a role where people are interacting with someone they think is a third-party but it turns out to have been the doctor.

Then we get into the weird world of televised shows where people play ‘alternative’ doctors. These do not show up in any of the series groupings and may have been stand alone series/shows. American readers will recognize the names Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant, and Joanna Lumley. But this is actually a long list of people, 17 people total if you go by the Wikipedia article.

I am going to completely exclude people who were deluded and thought they were the doctor and con-artists pretending to be the Doctor.

This brings us to one VERY big name who remains unaccounted for. Two films were done, cinema films, in 1965 and 1966. The Doctor is not identified as being any particular regeneration. Nor is this counted a his own regeneration, as the Eighth Doctor was in one televised movie in a failed attempt to reboot the series in 1996. No. This unaccounted for Doctor is played by none other than Peter Cushing, well-known for his many Hammer Films, often playing opposite Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. He is also well-known for playing Sherlock Holmes and Star Wars fanatics will know him as Grand Moff Tarkin. A fun, fan, factoid is that he was even considered for the part of Obi-Wan.

I have not seen those movies. I think I would give my eye teeth in order to see them.

And to think I looked up all this info because of a random comment by my roommate asking if the Doctor hadn’t already gone past his allotment of regeneration.

Sources are IMDB, many random articles and sites, and then a fairly huge set of charts on Wikipedia.